=Doodleism: A Doodlefesto

{from notes scratched on the back of a water/sewer bill}:The most provocative ideas are incomplete.

A spontaneous drawing is always the most electric, the most alive, the most biologically viable. The Zen artist operates by this principle.

• The more reworked a drawing the more the life has been drained away, the more inert, the deader it becomes.
• 
  
• [insert doodle]

• An idea, to be fully developed, must die the death of a thousand cuts. Reason demands a steep ransom. The more one writes (or speaks) citing arguments & explanations the less convincing one becomes. The more obvious it becomes that one is lying, leaving out fully half the truth, the shadow-side of any argument.

Behold the aphorism, the literary equivalent of the doodle, which refuses to be reduced by expansion.

THE DOODLE IS A PICTURE OF THOUGHT IN MOTION
THE ONLY KIND OF THOUGHT WORTHY OF THE NAME.

AS SUCH>>>THE DOODLE IS ANALOGOUS TO THE "SPIRIT OF THE LORD MOVING OVER THE WATERS."


The half-finished thing, the thing never complete, leaves the door open for wonder and imagination to enter;
———————————————> the hope that “this” 

is finally the thing we’ve all been waiting for 

is not dashed for the umpteenth time. 

Incompleteness  & imperfection are
themselves the two doors through which inspiration & fantasy 
slip inside.

The unread book is always the best. The half-read book is always half as good.

The doodle, like life, 

is always a mess; 

it’s comprised of lines that go nowhere, 

cross-outs, 

write-overs, 

repetitions, and embarrassments. 

The doodle, like life, 

is never finished, 

it’s only abandoned.

David Antin who doesn’t so much recite a poem as “think standing up” can be said to be practicing a form of spoken-word doodling.

First thought, best thought, said Allen Ginsberg.

                                     We would replace the masterpiece with the doodle, 

the canvas with the diner placemat, 

the book with the damp 

cocktail napkin.

• The best, most beautiful pictures and ideas have been lost between the scrap paper by the telephone and the artist's studio.

To be is to doodle.

Existence precedes 
doodling   

but doodling reveals essence.

The doodle is the secret 

signature of the self.

I see myself in the mirror of my doodling.

Up to now I’ve looked to the doodle as a source, as raw material, 

as notes to a complete work, as raw material, 

as inspiration, 

as direction leading to something else. 

What that something else is never materializes. Now I realize that the doodle was the thing I’d been seeking all along—the doodle is the Thing-Itself.

The doodle is not a cryptic key to the mystery. 

The doodle is the answer, 

the mystery, the magic exposed plain as day.

To be is to doodle.